Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: KayPat

In January offered up kudos to Sam Zell for his approach to changing Tribune’s corporate culture, including a clear, blunt, slightly irreverent employee handbook, as a major part of turning the company around.

Definitely not your typical media mogul, but it’s so nice to hear a CEO who isn’t full of BS and says exactly what’s he’s thinking—without running to his lawyers to check if it’s grounds for a lawsuit.

Newspaper cultures are known to be insular, complacent and with a bureaucracy that’s not just ossified—but petrified.

Zell’s knows how to come up with the perfect 2x4s to verbally bop people and get their attention.

“Mr. Zell…began his introduction by comparing the newspaper’s troubles to a case of erectile dysfunction. “I was trying to think about how I could describe to you what my job is, and I think in the most simplistic terms the challenge is how do we get somebody 126 years old to get it up?” After the laughter subsided, Mr. Zell delivered his punch-line of a prescription: “Well, I’m your Viagra, okay?””

He has little tolerance for those who can’t laugh at themselves.

“The eleventh commandment is thou shalt not take thyself seriously,” he told employees at the Chicago Tribune in February, referring to a new handbook for staff he had drawn up. “I’m the first one to laugh at Sam.”

As if to punctuate the point, he staged an elaborate April Fool’s joke this week, issuing a press release that Tribune had changed its name to ZellCoMediaEnterprises Inc., or ZCMEINC., and was moving to edible ink and a licorice press.”

As to his language, he told staffers at the LA Times, “You know, maybe I have to go to language classes to de-fuck my language, but I’m 66 years old and it’s too late for me to change.”

Because the company is housed in an employee share ownership program Zell isn’t shy about reminding people, as he did at the Chicago Tribune, that “If the Tribune deal doesn’t work, it ain’t going to change my lifestyle,” he told Tribune staffers in Chicago. “It really isn’t. But if the Tribune deal doesn’t work, or if it does work, it’s really going to change your lifestyle.”

Tough love with a sense of humor—I love it.

Do you think Sam Zell will save the Tribune Corporation?

Your comments—priceless

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under About Leadership, Communication, Culture, Followers, What Leaders DO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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